I suppose I
could have said “Virgin” but let’s face it, I haven’t been one of those for a
few years at least. Yes, I’m speaking about publishing. What did you think I
was talking about? (Sorry, I was channeling Max Vos with his addictions for
Milk, there. Hee hee)
The fact
is, I stepped into new shoes this week. I began my publishing career as a MM
fiction author and it’s served me well. I have branded myself to the point that
people know when a comical BDSM meme comes up as a profile picture, it’s most
likely mine. But… things have changed a bit recently. Bear with me for just a
moment.
I’ve always
been a romantic. I cut my teeth on dime store romance paperback novels in the
70s when I was a very young teen. Growing up in a conservative family, going to
church and all the rest, wasn’t conducive to conversations with my parents
about the bodice-ripping heroes appearing on those covers. That meant, I had to
sit at the lunch tables in middle school and talk about the books and authors
we loved… Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, Laurie McBain, Jude Deveraux, and of course,
Barbara Cartland.
My mother
worked in a bookstore and had encouraged my reading from a very young age. I
can’t remember a time when she didn’t read to me before I could read myself. It
was an amazing bonding time and she shared books with me that she thought I’d
like. She was constantly bringing home books for me to read and her favorite
genre was mystery/suspense. I grew to love Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, Robin
Cook and too many others to count. I can still remember a collection of Stephen
King’s short stories called “Night Shift” which was so damned amazing to the 15
year old me, I wanted to write stories just like that. I wasn’t a tremendous
horror fan, but then again, Stephen King’s books were more like suspense than
horror. Of course, sometimes they took that bloody leap off the cliff at the
end, but I always loved that about him. He was one screwed up author and I
adored that.
Back to
recent changes. In May, AJ Llewellyn and I traveled to Austin to attend an
author conference. While waiting to catch our plane, she told me that she’d
been invited to write a book for a new-to-me author, Toby Neal, which would be
included in Toby’s Kindle World collection of novellas. I’d never heard of the
Kindle World books but from what AJ explained, they were Amazon’s answer to
fanfiction made available to readers through legal means without copy write
infringement. In other words, authors were allowed to take a character or several
from a book written by another author, and give them their own stories,
expanding on the world the other author had created. AJ was a huge fan of
Toby’s Lei Crime Series books (9 of them). I wished her luck, bought the nine
books, and dove into the series.
The Lei
Crime Series is a book series about a young Hawaiian female detective, Lei
Texeira, who solves crimes in Hawaii. She is bright, pretty, and very very
vulnerable and though the books are mystery/suspense/thrillers in the purest
sense of the word, they also have just a touch of romance which really appealed
to me. I thought to myself, writing in the Kindle World Toby had created
sounded like a lot of fun, so when AJ persuaded Toby to give me a shot at it,
and I received an invitation to write a book, I was over the moon with
excitement.
There were
several caveats to what we could put into our novellas. One or two were quite
daunting to me. First of all, I couldn’t use any characters I’d used in my own
novels because the characters I use for the KW book become the property of the
“World”. My readers understand what this means to me. I’ve written over 40
books and in some way, in NEARLY every book, there are crossover characters
which appear in each other’s books. If I set a book in LA for example, Cassidy
Ryan, my hot LAPD cop from Silver Ties, is probably going to appear in it as he
did in the Master’s Boys books, the Assassins books, the other Silvers books,
or the Marine Bodyguards book, “The Thief”. No problem. Create entirely new
characters for the Lei Crime KW novella. Check.
The other
daunting thing was writing a book without sex or foul language. I’m an author
of gay erotica so trust me, this was not an easy feat but that said, it was more
than a bit of a challenge. My readers can testify to the fact that writing
without an abundant use of swear words was more than just a bit of a challenge.
It was fucking difficult. ß-See? Haha. Truthfully, leaving the sex
out of the book was not as hard (pardon the pun) as I had envisioned it would
be, since in truth, I’m slightly burnt out on writing sex scenes. However, my
readers expect them and though I think they are important if the book calls for
them, I don’t include as many as I used to. The exception to this are my BDSM
books because they require more. But at this point I am much more interested in
plotting out a great story and writing the narrative than I am in writing how
part A goes into part B. This is a risk for me so I’m really hoping I’ve done a
good enough job at it that my readers stick with me after this. This means
turning out a really high quality book that keeps the pages turning. We’ll see
if I was able to do that. The feedback has been positive so far and in fact, a
close friend told me it’s the best book I’ve ever written. Well, I hope others
agree.
Next, the
most difficult thing of all when writing a book in some other author’s “World”
is staying true to my own voice and yet, making the book blend with her series
and writing her characters with realism. I had to make her characters in my
book sound as if they were written by her. Any author who has ever tried to do
this knows how nearly impossible this is to do effectively. In fact, I finished
the first 15,000 words of Unforeseen Danger and then after reading and
re-reading it, ended up deleting 7,500 of them because they sounded flat. I was
trying to sound like her and lost myself in the midst of it all. Not that Toby
writes flat at all. Her characters are beautifully developed and her stories highly
original but when I tried to write her characters, they didn’t sound like my
writing. Once I realized they WERE hers and didn’t have to sound like mine, I
was able to move forward. This little 32,000 word novella ended up taking me
twice as long as it should have because not only did I want to sound like
myself, I had to accurately represent her characters on the page because her
readers would know it if they didn’t. I’m satisfied with the finished product.
Finally,
this book is a mystery/suspense story. It is not a romance, although it most
definitely has elements of romance toward the end. It was a good exercise in
writing purely mystery, although my readers know how much I love writing
mystery. It appears in one way or another in nearly every book I write. I’ve
definitely written my share of bad guys and they always get theirs in the end. I’ve
shot them, run them though with a broadsword, and burnt them alive. Haha. Yes,
my bad guys always get it in the end. That is one of the elements I DIDN’T have
to change when writing Unforeseen Danger. I won’t give it away, but I think
you’ll like how it all turns out.
If this
experiment in writing mystery/suspense works, you’ll see more of it in the
future. I am encouraged by the rankings on Amazon and the positive reviews so
far. I hope you guys will give it a shot, if you haven’t so far, but be
prepared for something just a little different from this author.
Thank you
for your support and encouragement.
Patricia xoxo
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